While I was researching a post about the 49th anniversary of the Trieste’s dive to the deepest part of the oceans (here), I came across this:

Swimming six feet above the bottom were a shrimp and a jellyfish, neither of them bothered by the enormous pressure on their bodies. The very fact that these creatures were living and healthy proved that the water had oxygen in it. Therefore it must circulate, because if it were stagnant in the trench, its oxygen would long since have disappeared. One immediate conclusion: ocean trenches are not safe places for dumping radioactive wastes, since their water does not stay put.

Here’s a question for those of you concerned about the Navy’s media image – should the Navy be doing a better job of reporting on all the vital work it has performed in weather forecasting, environmental studies, nuclear safety, oceanography and other vital issues of the day?

Who should lead the effort and what platforms should they be using? Is the Coast Guard doing this better than the Navy?

Any Vice Admirals with opinions should feel free to respond, along with anyone else, of course.

Trieste’s dive was exactly one of the vivid instances from the past I recalled when looking through the commentary on the “Perceptions…” post, especially where media interest in things naval were concerned. Page through Look, Life, Time, and especially National Geographic from the 50’s and early 60’s and there is a wealth of richly illustrated articles on all the things Navy was up (or in this case, down) to.
Today? Well, I guess there’s the reruns on Discovery and Military channels…
– SJS

I’m frequently impressed by what my fellow sailors are doing as reflected in “All Hands”. My question is — why aren’t some of those remarkable achievements, some with obvious significant civic value, lauded in the press? For instance, the Navy’s Mobile Diving and Salvage Units have repeatedly been called upon to support aircraft recovery and engineering issues vital to America (such as summer 2007 Minneapolis I-35 collapse). While I recall some coverage of the I-35 story, I don’t think it was captured for the national media appropriately.

Also on the vein of publicity — and potentially to err in the direction of a rant — I still question the utter lack of publicity in the cases of Navy SEALs who have earned the Silver Star. While I believe that some of the living and currently serving SEALs who have earned the Silver Star have justifiable security concerns with publicity, I still see almost no mention in the press of the heroic actions of many of our fallen heroes. I’m not sure that the fact of naval presence on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan even begins to graze the popular conciousness.